This can not always be the type of behaviour you actually wanted. For example - Trial Mech suicide rushing is something that has and is happening because it's simply rewarding. IN a very short timeframe, a player can earn a lot of C-Bills, for little work.
Now, you can pull out the thumb screws and all and ban people for this kind of behaviour, but this is just the big, obvious thing people can use to exploit the rewards. Trying to moderate this behaviour or auto-detect can get more and more complex and ultimately, you have to ask yourself, is it really worth it?
Fundamentally, you are putting your players in a bad spot - they really want those C-Bills or XP so they can advance, that they can get the "toys" they want to have - but you say that some ways are off-limits and punishable.
And even if you're not worried about people exploting the system - the reward system can introduce conflicts between players.
In short - one player may want to press on when the tide of the battle is turning against his team - but another player may prefer to retreat and give up, so his repair costs aren't that high. And we can't just say one of the players is clearly wrong - like the second player shouldn't worry about the bottom line, this is a game he's playing for fun - if he has more fun earning C-Bills and acquiring his next mech or expensive item, then he's still doing this to increase his fun. OR do we want to say the first player is dumb because he's risking his money - but isn't this game about fighting eahc other in battle mechs, and retreating from a battle isn't really doing that?
So what you should instead look at is - how can you reward the kind of behaviour you really want people to show? How can we ensure that people push in the same direction in a team?
In my opinion:
Fighting hard and giving everything you got should be rewarded. Just getting yourself killed as quickly as possible so the match is over should not be rewarded.
Fighting despite the odds turning against you should be rewarded, so that everyone has a reason to push on and people don't conflict with each on whether to push or to retreat.
(It is possible you have a different opinion - you may want that the game is also about cutting your losses and knowing when to retreat, that it's about minimizing your risks. If you do so, that's fine - you will have to set up a reward schema for that)
So, what would I do:
1) Everyone should work for a win.
So winning must be rewarded better than losing - even if that makes it harsher on new players that are likely to lose at first.
2) The longer the battle was fought, the better it should be rewarded.
You may simply reward just the time, basically giving some C-Bills or XP for every minute played. There are two perspectives on this
But if you reward the time itself, on a per match basis, it is better if the battle is drawn out. This may be exploitable - some people may deliberately lengthen the match with retreats and hiding and deliberately not capping despite the possibility to do so. If this is an issue, one would need that in a series of matches, it would still be better to have more matches per time. I think this is likely inherently to happen, because in a longer match, you still can only win once, and you can still only kill each enemy once, so there is a strict limit to it.
3) The harder fought the battle, the better it should be rewarded.
Now, how do we measure "hard fought". This can be difficult. But a simple measure could simply be - give team-wide rewards for damage dealt, damage taken as well as kills. That means for every point of damage your team took, and every point of damage you dealt to the other side of the team, every team member gets a reward (even if they didn't inflict or take the damage themselves). And additionally - kill rewards should also be granted to all players (in addition to assists and kills). Ideally, the rewards for killing should be set so that an "objective win" (in Assault, that's capture), may still be very competitive reward-wise with an "all-enemy kill" win - simply so that there is always a reason to fight for the mission objective.
Having a reward for damage taken is also an indirect compensation for people that have high repair cost after a match - the cost is still there, but the damage taken reward may lower the cost. But it should probably not alone be sufficient to cover the repair cost - if it did, then suiciding would again be financially interesting.
A Possible Reward Scheme
I do not use C-Bill and XP rewards here - I just assign "points" that will need an XP/C-Bill conversion rate. This does not include salvage rewards.
General Reward
Wins: You gain a +50 % extra points from all other sources
Loss: You gain only 50 % points from all other sources
Tie: You gain the points from other sources.
Match Length: 1 per second
Salvage: You gain 5 % per enemy mech's remaining worth (e.g. after subtracting all damage and destroyed components) as direct C-Bill award.
Player Rewards
Your Kills: 500 Points
Your Assists: 500 Points
Spotting Assist: 150 Points
Your Damage Dealt: 10 Points per Point of Damage Inflicted
Your Damage Taken: 5 Points per Point of Damage Taken
Component Destroyed: 500 Points
Team Kill: -750 Points
Damage Dealt to Team Mate: -5 per Point of Damage Inflicted
Objective Assist: 500 Points
Time Alive: 1 point per second.
Team Rewards
Kills: 250 Points
Deaths: -50 Points
Assists: 100 Points
Spot Assists: 50 Points
Damage Dealt: 5 Points per Point of Damage Taken
Damage Taken: 2 Point per Point of Damage Taken
Objective Achieved: 4,000 Points
Total Time Alive for Team: 5 point per minute
Edited by MustrumRidcully, 17 November 2012 - 04:00 PM.